Faith!

Lately I have been thinking and pondering what faith really is...does it mean that if we have have faith then everything that we pray for will be answered the way that we hope it will? I would like to say yes, that is it, but it's not. Faith is an action word I am finding. President Henry B. Eyring said one time in a talk..."great faith has a short shelf life" so I figure in order to keep "great faith", we have to work on it all the time. I think sometimes when we pray for more faith (as I have been doing lately) that Heavenly Father allows us to have experiences with which we are asked to exercise faith, even when the challenges seem insurmountable and it takes a huge amount of faith to go forward, to gain "great faith". I also read a talk to today by Elder Jeffrey Holland entitled Remember Lot's Wife....I recommend it to everyone, anyway, he says in his talk when he talks about Lot's wife, " She doubted the Lord's ability to give her something better than she had." He also said that "faith is always pointed to the future." So, with that in mind, I have thought that if we show faith in Heavenly Father and His ability to give us better than what we have, even when the future that we can see is scary and uncertain, and even bleak, then we will stretch and grow and expand our limited ability to understand and we will gain "great faith"! That is what I have decided to do...I prayed for more faith, for more strength and Heavenly Father is allowing me to stretch and grow and expand my faith and thru all this stretching and growing and expanding, I will gain strength because I will exercise all the spiritual muscles that I have to stand up in the face of overwhelming challenges and say, I know where my strength lies....and "I CAN DO ALL THINGS thru Christ who strengtheneth me"....and that is what the bottom line is for me....all I have is my faith and I will not abandon it for if I show Heavenly Father that I trust him and I will follow Him, then He will take my little faith and turn it into "great faith". So what I have learned about faith is this...to believe and trust that Heavenly Father has not nor will ever leave us alone, and we have to exercise faith to help it grow. Experiences that are hard give us those opportunities to exercise that faith so I pray that I will rise to the challenges that we now face in our family. Jeff and I are united in our belief that the Lord is in control and He will lead us where we need to be...the road may be narrow, rocky, and hard but we will walk it hand in hand and not look back, because "great faith" always points to the future!